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Editing video’s the old fashioned way, using a board!

Today’s image is kind of a where things used to be an image. It is an old video editing system we had many years ago (circa mid – 1990’s). The device could have two video sources and then would output the playing course on a monitor. Finally, the last connection was a destination. Or you have to have a video camera and two VCR’s to make this work. Sadly, we had all of that. I made about ten videos over the years with this device. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t the professional level machines my video production wife used (ergo, she hated this board).

Why am I talking about old technology tools today? Well in part to mention that everything you could do (with a lot of manual intervention) with that board you can now do on your computer, and frankly the price difference is pretty impressive. The computer based video editing software you can get now has a lot more functi8onality. If you wanted to add music to a video back in the day, you had to pump the music source into the board. Now, you simply drop an MP3 file (that YOU OWN) into your video. Then you are off to the video publishing reality. Personally, I push most of the video’s I do to YouTube, but there are other places you can publish to as well.

What was is no more. Now everyone can edit video right on their cellular devices.  The question I have going forward is ultimately what additional video functionality will move away from professionals and into the amateur world. 360-degree cameras hit the shelves a little over a year ago. 3d cameras hit the market two years before that. AR/VR enabled cameras are available now, (360-degree camera and software). The home video of tomorrow is going to be an amazing experience.

I do miss my manual editing board though. Imagine a new board like that, where you could have a live drone or ROV feed, editing that on the fly with home security footage or live camera footage to create a VR/AR experience. The changes are simply exciting now! I can’t wait to see what is next!

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What do you think?

Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

8 Comments

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  1. Geez, I saw so much of this kind of stuff change in graphic arts, photography, film and video.
    I have to confess that one of my projects is to simulate the look of small gauge films with my new devices. The rhythm of the splices etc…
    The ease and accessibility has produced a tsunami of works – all of which are not of the quality in craftsmanship that comes with practice I guess.

      • The ability to convert old films is pretty awesome. Maybe one of the greatest advantages of the changes. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate the easing of process. I used to load fonts on film strips into the typesetting machine and set the line length in octal numbers. I love the convenience. I just miss the look of some of the old techniques.

        • There is a moment that Malcolm Gladwell called the tipping point where the pressure for the new exceeds the ability of the existing to compete. The tipping point also, however, causes what I call the nostalgia point. That moment you realize that what was wasn’t as bad.

          A good friend of mine calls this the dilemma of modern. She used to have a picture in her office, and when we would complain about change, she would point to the picture. It was a man standing in water (she said no woman was stupid enough to take on the job in the first place). The caption read when you are up to your neck in alligators it is hard to remember your original job was to drain the swamp!

          • I like that idea of the nostalgia point … I hadn’t thought of that in that way. I have to say that when Photoshop and Quark took over I never minded not spotting negatives but i missed the darkroom work.
            I’ve mainly thought in terms of desirable difficulty. Something in the old process that adds to or improves results. It’s really hard to find concrete examples that are not just nostalgia. I still make Intaglio prints but can also fake the look of them well. There are some aspects to chemical photography double exposures that are difficult to replicate but again mainly nostalgia. Funny that we keep alive some things and not others … a nostalgia quotient perhaps.

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